During minicamp, Steelers linebacker Devin Bush was open when he talked about his lack of confidence entering last season.
It was easy to understand, and easy to show compassion towards.
Bush, coming off a season-ending knee surgery, struggled during the 2021 season to play at a consistently aggressive rate.
It was noticeable to everyone, including himself.
But now, three weeks into Steelers training camp, and coming off a performance in Saturday’s preseason opener that looked eerily similar to 2021, Bush came off Tuesday as someone who is over trying to make a career happen in Pittsburgh.
Bush was asked if he feels like this is his last chance to hang on with the Steelers beyond this year. His answer was telling.
“I mean, it’s the business,” Bush said. “I mean, I’m going to still be in the NFL. So we’ll see.”
Bush's lack of outward desire to make it work in Pittsburgh followed his comments from the spring.
“I don’t think I’ve got nothing to prove,” he said then. “I’m a first-rounder, a top ten pick. That’s never going to change.”
The feel of the entire media availability — Bush’s first of training camp and the preseason — was that the fourth-year linebacker, for whom the Steelers traded up to select tenth overall, is ready to move on from Pittsburgh.
That could be why the Steelers listed another inside linebacker, Robert Spillane, as a co-starter with Bush, perhaps in an attempt to light in a fire in a player who seems disinterested.
“I think we have a good rotation,” Bush said about the group that also includes Myles Jack, who the team signed in free agency. “We’re all three linebackers that can be on the field at one time.
“It was no shot to me, or anything like that. If that’s what you’re thinking.”
Bush believes that he still needs more reps, more experience, before the regular season opener on September 11. But he also seems somewhat laissez-faire towards the splitting of those reps.
"I've been playing football my whole life,” he said. “So, I know how to play football."
Bush not only has come off far too nonchalant, but also entitled. It’s not hard to imagine where that may come from.
His father, Devin Bush Sr., frequently used social media to criticize and question reporters who questioned his son’s play last season. He even called in to the Paul Zeise Show on 93.7 The Fan, and accused Zeise of 'not knowing anything about Pittsburgh Steelers football.'
Now, without his fifth-year option selected — a telling sign of the organization’s long term distrust in him — Bush and his old man may not have to worry about Pittsburgh reporters much longer.
Maybe that’s what they want.
“I got 17 weeks,” Bush said. “And we’re going to see what happens after that.”